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=====5.2.11.3. An Early Description of Interpretation=====
=====5.2.11.3. An Early Description of Interpretation=====
<pre>
Insofar as the analysis of etymological and other associations existing among familiar and other words can lead up in time to a proper analysis of the underlying concepts involved, the discussion just given can be taken in the spirit with which it is offered, as a body of suggestions about the derivation of an abductive faculty from an advisory function. But insofar as the sole themes that exhibit any novelty about them are easy to lose in the cacophony of verbal clutter that frequently ensues, it may be advisable, one last time, in as summary a refrain as possible, to recapitulate the chief points of originality to which this work gives fanfare. The originality I advert to appears to arise from Aristotle:
Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).
Aristotle, De Interpretatione, i.16a4 9
Of all the early intimations of the sign relation that have come down to the present time, this depiction is the clearest and the fullest, in the level and the lucidity of the details that it articulates, of any I know. There will be ample occasion to return to its ideas on a recurring basis throughout the rest of this work. For the moment, there are especially a couple of themes, traceable to this locus and running through its text, that I want to draw out and to emphasize, not only for the message that they convey for the sake of the immediate inquiry, but for their manner of bearing it into the current context of applications.
The assumptions and implications of Aristotle's account that are relevant here are first listed briefly, after which all of the points in turn are explored in full detail.
1. assumptions of constancy
2. compound of fractures
3. cognitive coin/currency/ideas are derivative in relation to affective basis/realm/ideas
4. concrete material presented by emotions: affects and motives
On Aristotle's account, there is a special path of relationship that can be traced in either direction between the pragmatic objects (pragmata) that attract, concern, or interest the mind and the symbolic signs that the mind exploits to express its feelings or its thoughts, and this route passes through the "pathemata", literally, the affects that these objects impress on the mind (psyche). Picturesquely, the image overall is that of a coin, which is cast, minted, or stamped in a die, mold, or template and then split into fragments that serve as tokens of mutual recognition if and when they are ever again caused "to be cast or thrust together" (symballein). Aside from the nuance that distinguishes artificial and cultural symbols (symbola) from biological and natural signs (semeia), the signs that mediate peoples' cognitive processes can be seen to arise as fragments of likenesses of their objects. And so it is appropriate to dub this picture of sign relations as the "iconoclastic theory of signs".
A reasonably useful correspondence is formed between the sign relations of Aristotle and Peirce, respectively, by fashioning the following rough linkages: (1) Associate the categories of "objects" in both accounts; (2) Collapse for the moment the distinction between "signs spoken" and "signs written" and put them together in association with a maximally generic class of "signs"; (3) Incorporate "pathemata" as a particular species of mental conditions, determinations, or entities, that is, as a special class of modes of bearing and modes of being affecting the mind, and put them in association with a special class of "interpretant signs".
It is only the last part of this likely correspondence that leads to much difficulty and requires a closer examination to untangle its complexities. In accord with the lines of its suggestion "affections" and "impressions" are brought together and given their places within a maximally generic class of affective states, cognitive conditions, conceptual formations, ideal forms, motive dispositions, potentially existent "states of mind", and virtually existent "things in mind". Under these and other terms, a catch all category is formed that ranges through the entire panorama of mental dispositions and mental entities, encompassing the full spectrum of determinations in the medium of the mind, all of which, for maximum convenience and generality can be referred to most simply as "ideas". Granted this endowment of "ideas", the suggestion is made to associate all of these "ideas", at least, for the purposes of a formal treatment, with the pragmatic domain of "interpretant signs".
This recasting of Aristotle's model of interpretation into the molds of Peirce's theory of sign relations, given that the former retains a body of concrete material that the latter casts off from its abstract forms, barely roughs out an interpretation of the theory in terms of the model. And yet this interpretation is still a bit forced in the character of its suggested associations, and it still faces a number of objections to the likelihood of its truth, its utility, or its other potential virtues ever becoming actualized. These objections indicate a daunting array of more obscure obstacles that line up behind and loom into the distance beyond the one or two more obstinate obstructions that make themselves obvious at present, all of which inveigh, inveigle, and weigh against carrying through the completion of a viable work along the lines projected.
Many of the problems with this trial interpretation, in it stands in its currently tentative state of development, can be traced to the fact that I have not fully disentangled the formal and the material aspects of the category of pathemata, or else, I have not distinguished the properties they display by virtue of their roles in a relation from the properties they exhibit by virtue of their inherent natures. Indeed, as the issue now appears to me on reflection, I have not examined thoroughly enough the relation between the two distinctions I just supposed, that between form and matter, and that between relation and essence, nor even asked how and whether any such distinctions can be made on a reliable basis.
One of the things that one means by "matter" is the mass of instances that one uses to illustrate a common "form". In this sense of the terms, the distinction between form and matter has been implicitly relevant to this work, if not especially salient within it, ever since it entered on the course of discussing the process and the product of formalization in terms of a selection of concrete examples. One of the reasons that one chooses to present a formal subject in the medium of its own materials, that is, by means of examples, is that this very form is not yet grasped abstractly enough, that is, by means of clear and distinctive definitions. This choice can be due to the presence of difficulties and obstructions, on the part of the presenter or the presentee, that stand in the way of a more comprehensive form of understanding being achieved all at once.
In the light of these considerations, one can see that this discussion has stayed immersed in the matter of its topic for quite some time now. Indeed, it is fair to describe the current trajectory of this inquiry as "a matter in search of its form". A distinction between form and matter, if it matters to anyone, is not already finished, but yet to be formed. And yet, no sooner does it form itself in a particular way than it seems, at least with regard to itself, that it was always meant to be that way. And so one encounters a form of distinction that evolves in coincidence with a form of life, taking the essence of its own formation to be a kind of "synthetic a priori" (SAP). Several factors now conspire to make the relevance of this distinction become more acute at this point.
The whole class of affections, cognitions, dispositions, impressions, and motivations of the mind that I include in the category of "ideas" is the smallest collection I can form that remains connected in its associations, that is, as a class of signs whose interpretations lead in and to itself. But giving this host of ideas a fixed and a simple name, no matter how well it means to unify the manifold of impressions under a simple term, and no matter how well it manages to organize the array of associations under a specious concept of unity, does nothing to dispell the blooming complexity, the boiling diversity, the booming heterogeneity, and the bubbling inconruity of the ideas themselves, which seem to spite every attempt to incorporate their livelier qualities and to regulate their ongoing varieties in the almost purely nominal forms of integrity that mere words can provide.
A purely formal study of sign relations could proceed unhindered from this point, at least, unencumbered by the material aspects of its subject, if only it had a clear definition of what a sign relation is meant to be. And yet, from a purely formal perspective, almost any axioms are worth pursuing, as long as they pick out an interesting class of formal objects and even so long as they manifest a certain elegance in their own right.
It is frequently claimed that the virtues of "elegance" and "interest" are qualities that abstract axioms and formal objects can possess quite independently of their anchorage in, bearing on, connection to, or any other crassly pragmatic relationship with a "ground", such as might be constituted by an additional application to a concrete subject or by an extraneous utility in a practical matter. I am tempted to agree, though I suspect that there are further difficulties and greater paradoxes still hiding within the word "independently". In any case, if the axioms that one selects to characterize sign relations are intended to have empirical applications, objective justifications, and practical motivations, to be justified by reasons that go beyond the contemplation of abstract forms for their own sakes, to be motivated by purposes that reach beyond the purer forms of aesthetic enjoyment, the self justifying and self seeking forms of entertainment, exercise, experiment, and exploration, or the riskier forms of speculation against the chances of their future utility, and until the essential features of a general definition can be grasped, it will be necessary to preserve the data of their material occurrences for whatever insight it can afford into the qualities that determine the worth of signs, and it will be prudent to continue mining the material evidence for exemplary instances of their actual use.
Before this discussion can proceed much further, there are a couple of seeming distinctions that I find myself in need of trying to make real, or otherwise of knowing the reason why they cannot be made in reality. There are reasons why I emphasize the "seeming" and "trying" aspects of this situation: (1) It is not entirely clear to me whether these apparent distinctions, as commonly described and as usually intended, are capable of being maintained in reality, as opposed to what little significance they have while posed on the grounds of mere imagination. (2) Even if the corresponding forms of distinction are capable of being established in a clear, a proper, and a successful manner, it remains an open question to me at this point how this ought to be done in practice, and the experiences I have had in previous attempts lead me to believe that each of these tasks is far more difficult than it appears at first.
In the process of carrying out this inquiry I find it necessary to make a type of rhetorical transition that can be cast in the stereotyped form: "In the process of doing x I find it necessary to do y."
</pre>
=====5.2.11.4. Descriptions of the Mind=====
=====5.2.11.4. Descriptions of the Mind=====
